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Samsung tablets top iPads in J.D. Power customer satisfaction survey

updated 03:39 pm EDT, Thu October 31, 2013

by MacNN Staff

Samsung tablets take top spot in J.D. Power study

Samsung tablets have hopped ahead of Apple's iPad line in terms of customer satisfaction, according to the latest study from J.D. Power. Tablets from the South Korean tech giant grabbed the top spot in the J.D. Power's second installation of tablet ratings for 2013, winning overall and ending Apple's run of nine straight J.D. Power awards between both the iPad and the iPhone. Apple's devices tended to score higher than Samsung's in most categories, but their premium cost appears to have played a major role in Samsung slipping ahead.

The new study rated customer satisfaction on a 1,000-point scale, and most tablets scored rather high. Samsung's overall score of 835, though, was just barely enough to move past Apple at 833. Close behind were devices from Amazon and Asus, scoring 826 and 821 respectively. Devices from Acer lagged well below the study average of 821, scoring only 781.

The study noted that Samsung's tablets saw improvements in all five study metrics - performance, ease of use, physical design, features, and cost - since previous reporting in April 2013. In particular, Samsung saw improvement in terms of cost, scoring significantly higher than in the last reporting period. Apple's premium prices, though, gave it the lowest score among major manufacturers in the cost metric, despite its high scores in every other metric.

The new customer satisfaction figures illustrate the growing competition in the tablet segment, which Apple CEO Tim Cook has called "the mother of all markets." Apple still leads that market in terms of sales, and likely profit, but Samsung and others are making strides and trying to close the gap. The latest figures from IHS indicate that Apple's iPad devices now account for 30 percent of total tablet shipments, down 12.7 percentage points over the last 12 months. Samsung, meanwhile, added 8.1 points to its share, holding 22.2 percent of the tablet market in the third quarter of this year.

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6 Comments

You do realize that the only category that iPad was NOT top in was $. This JD Powers survey in not even consistent as they say $ is only 16% of the result but that doesn't jive with their final, attention grabbing, headline.

Not impressed with the 3 Galaxy Tab 10.1" Purchased by our company in Oct 2012, last software update Android 4.0.4 in Jan. Better hardware than the iPad 2, but terrible with original version on it (I think it was a 3.x version to begin wtih) and still choppy/laggy UI with Anrdoid 4.0.4. One of the developers who otherwise enjoys Android devices agreed it wasn't worth the time to keep these up to date for security fixes at the very least. So they now are banned from the network.

The overall result of that does seem pretty odd; given that Apple was at the top of the Performance, Ease if Use, Physical Design, and Features categories (in fact, nothing else even came close in ease of use OR performance), and Samsung was either one or two notches below Apple in all four of those categories, while in Cost Samsung was "better than average" and Apple was below average (similarly, two notches difference), it's odd that overall Samsung ends up on top in satisfaction.

If "overall satisfaction" was a separate question, and the people being surveyed were just REALLY price-sensitive, then that would make sense ("Hey, it's not fantastic, but boy was it cheap!"), but in the press release it says that price only accounts for 16% of the rating. (They don't publsih actual numbers for anything but the overall, do they?)

Then again, if you look at the graph, 833 out of 1000 is five pips and 826 is three pips; it would seem that their bins are REALLY small.

Who cares. Buy the device you will enjoy using, that provides you with comforts you didn't have previously, and opens the door to new possibilities. Well, Apple defined the category years ago...congratulations Samsung on having (only) a lower price! Remember, Internet traffics occurs 4 out of 5 times on an iOS device. It must be such a pleasure to use a Samsung tablet.

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